Today we will continue on with looking into God’s Social
Security Plan. The focus of today is
going to be family. Families are the #1
means by which the elderly are to be secure in their later years. In part 1 we established the commandment of
honoring your mother and father and how his carries on throughout life. Here in part 2 we have a clear command from
scripture that taking care of family is of the highest priorities.
I Timothy 5:8 But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.
Did you catch what it says in this verse? If you do not care for family, you are denying the faith! You do not get much stronger language than this. Tying this in with the honoring father and mother commandment, It is the expected Christian duty of a family to take care of and provide for the elderly in their family. It is a sin not to.
When I was a small child, we cared for my grandfather in his later years. He lived in our house and my parents paid for his care. He did play an important role in our family though. While my parents worked, or went out taking care of family business, Grandpa would be the babysitter. With the cost of daycare these days (and even then), what a great benefit to the family grandpa was financially. It freed my parents up to do the things needed to run the family.
Another thing about having the elders taken care of by the family was the passing on of wisdom to the younger generations. My grandpa had a million sayings about life that to this day pop into my head. I use the wisdom he passed on almost daily. He taught me other things to, like how to fish. His love for music was given to me as well. Grandpa could play by ear most anything, and that skill he helped to develop in me. I only wish he had lived longer and passed on more.
These relationships are how a culture passes on itself to future generations. It creates a cohesiveness in the culture, and a knowledge of the cultures past and ties it to the present. It is a way that culture identity is passed along and makes I possible for a culture to perpetuate and stay connected with the roots of its past.
These days, with the advent of Government social security, we have lost those things. Families have given up the care for their elderly, passing off the responsibility to government. Over just a couple generations of the government taking care of our elderly, we have lost a lot of our culture, drifted away from the roots of who we are as a people. It is now the government deciding these things.
Also with the government stepping in to do what was the families mandate, it has broken down the families. We no longer see generations living together or even near each other. These days we segregate our old people in homes or retirement communities and miss out on all of their wisdom and knowledge. We lose all the stories of our history and lose context with our past.
Economics are also affected by this break down of the family units. In the past, the larger families would live on land they owned. Each generation would build upon the wealth created by the previous. The longer and larger the family, the more economic security was generated for the family as a whole, and a greater ability to carry out our God given duty to take care of our family. In the last two generations, as families split up, the lands held by families has been sold off to corporations. It is now large businesses that are reaping in the wealth generated by the land while the broken and scattered families have been reduced to little more than slave labor, passing along their meager wages to the mega corporations who bought their land. The family is then left with less and less resources to take care of the family causing a greater reliance on a government program to do the job that we were put in charge of.
Whatever are circumstance are now, it is not the job of government to take care of family. The social security for our elderly falls square into the responsibility of the family, scripturally. It is time that families retake that mantle of being responsible for their own and not be so expectant on big government to do their job.
I Timothy 5:8 But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.
Did you catch what it says in this verse? If you do not care for family, you are denying the faith! You do not get much stronger language than this. Tying this in with the honoring father and mother commandment, It is the expected Christian duty of a family to take care of and provide for the elderly in their family. It is a sin not to.
When I was a small child, we cared for my grandfather in his later years. He lived in our house and my parents paid for his care. He did play an important role in our family though. While my parents worked, or went out taking care of family business, Grandpa would be the babysitter. With the cost of daycare these days (and even then), what a great benefit to the family grandpa was financially. It freed my parents up to do the things needed to run the family.
Another thing about having the elders taken care of by the family was the passing on of wisdom to the younger generations. My grandpa had a million sayings about life that to this day pop into my head. I use the wisdom he passed on almost daily. He taught me other things to, like how to fish. His love for music was given to me as well. Grandpa could play by ear most anything, and that skill he helped to develop in me. I only wish he had lived longer and passed on more.
These relationships are how a culture passes on itself to future generations. It creates a cohesiveness in the culture, and a knowledge of the cultures past and ties it to the present. It is a way that culture identity is passed along and makes I possible for a culture to perpetuate and stay connected with the roots of its past.
These days, with the advent of Government social security, we have lost those things. Families have given up the care for their elderly, passing off the responsibility to government. Over just a couple generations of the government taking care of our elderly, we have lost a lot of our culture, drifted away from the roots of who we are as a people. It is now the government deciding these things.
Also with the government stepping in to do what was the families mandate, it has broken down the families. We no longer see generations living together or even near each other. These days we segregate our old people in homes or retirement communities and miss out on all of their wisdom and knowledge. We lose all the stories of our history and lose context with our past.
Economics are also affected by this break down of the family units. In the past, the larger families would live on land they owned. Each generation would build upon the wealth created by the previous. The longer and larger the family, the more economic security was generated for the family as a whole, and a greater ability to carry out our God given duty to take care of our family. In the last two generations, as families split up, the lands held by families has been sold off to corporations. It is now large businesses that are reaping in the wealth generated by the land while the broken and scattered families have been reduced to little more than slave labor, passing along their meager wages to the mega corporations who bought their land. The family is then left with less and less resources to take care of the family causing a greater reliance on a government program to do the job that we were put in charge of.
Whatever are circumstance are now, it is not the job of government to take care of family. The social security for our elderly falls square into the responsibility of the family, scripturally. It is time that families retake that mantle of being responsible for their own and not be so expectant on big government to do their job.
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